5 Tips when it comes to bedtime!
Our friend Alanna from Good Night Sleep Site shares her top 5 tips when it comes to sleeping and creating a routine for your little one.
Getting your baby or toddler to sleep through the night can be a struggle and don’t even mention naps! Whether you’re a first-time or been-there-done-that parent, we all go through sleepless nights. Here are five ways to help your child sleep at night, and get some rest for yourself, too!
By four to six months, babies will start showing a more predictable pattern of daytime sleep, so it’s a great time to start developing a nap schedule. Daytime sleep is one of the most important fundamentals in creating healthy sleep at night, but they’re also one of the most common sleep issues out there. We want to aim for a consolidated nap of at least and hour or more. While short naps of 30-45 minutes are common, it’s not enough of a restorative sleep and they are capable of pushing into the next cycle with a lot of persistence and consistency.
Sometimes an earlier bedtime is all that’s required to get your child sleeping through the night. It also could help with bedtime battles and early risers. You’ll get your nights back and your baby will go down before he’s overtired. While it may seem counter-intuitive, when babies are put to bed too late they become overtired and have a hard time accepting sleep and staying asleep throughout the night.
Doing the same routine every night helps your child understand that bedtime is soon approaching. This can actually be practiced from day 1. Establishing this consistent routine will help your child understand that it’s bedtime. You can also include a short naptime routine to help prepare them for some great daytime slumber.
Sleep training doesn’t mean you can’t bond and cuddle your baby at bedtime. We want to make sure that we aren’t creating sleep associations, like rocking and nursing to sleep. It’s important to understand your child will remember how they fell asleep, and when they wake up throughout the night they will need those associations recreated. Once your child learns how to fall asleep on their own they will be able to do it easily throughout the night. Put your child to bed drowsy, not asleep. Stop. Wait. Listen. You may surprise yourself when they fall back asleep on their own.
No matter what method you choose or how you schedule your routine, please remain consistent. I can’t stress that enough. Consistency is key! Once you have carved out your schedule and implemented it, your best chance of success is to stick with it.
You also have a better chance of remaining consistent if you choose a method that you are comfortable with, and that follows your parenting philosophy. This makes it less likely that you’ll quit half way through. Be patient and with time and consistency, your kids will learn how to get the healthy sleep the need.
Here’s Munchkin comes in when it comes to developing a sleep routine and waking up to sleep associations.
These are top 3 Munchkin Sleep items:
Munchkin Shhh Portable Sound Machine– We have been using this with Baby Alessandro since he was born. It soothes him to go to sleep when we are out and about. Within a minute of me putting it on he is fast asleep. He associates the sound with sleep time.The Munchkin Shh.. machine has 3 different sounds such as- heartbeat, shushing and white noise and an automatic shut-off timer. It’s battery operated and portable so it goes with you. We love it for travel too!
Munchkin Nursery Projector and Sound System– We love this for the bed time and one of our fave features is that it has a voice activation and turns the it back on if baby cries. You know when your just about to head back upstairs to check on the baby and then BOOM the sound comes back on and baby is back asleep. Thanks MUNCHKIN!!!!!
Munchkin Light My Way Light Night– Gianmarco used this as a toddler. It’s a portable night light. We would read him story time and it close to him. It was like his security blanket but in the form of a light. So every night we would go to bed and he would bring it with him into bed. This was all part of his routine which is a key factor when it comes to bed time.
Check out our FB LIVE video below as we test out our top 3 Munchkin products in the dark!
This post is sponsored by Munchkin Canada however all thoughts and ideas are our own.
.png)
